So yea, finally got 450. It only took a couple dozen gnomish army knives and a second pair of ret goggles to get the last two skills. Advice for other engineers: Do not make your goggles until they will max your skill. It's not a total waste since I can use the second pair with PvP-specific gems and enchants.

I noticed that I, and many other people, have jumped into heroics a lot faster this time around. It helps not having rep requirements. They're tough when not fully geared, but what's the sense in waiting around to overgear them? I'm still 19 defense away from uncrittable, which means more fun for the healer. :P

I got a bunch of new gear from heroics today. VH gave new pants. Nexus gave ret boots, a hit/ap trinket, and crit healing shoulders. Utgarde Keep gave a new tanking sword.

The whole process gave a ton of rep, Ebon Blade to be specific. After I do dailies tomorrow I'll be exalted, which means new boots which will make the ones I got today obsolete. When I got them I'd not expected to get so much rep in one day.

My next tabard will probably be Wyrmcrest since they seem to have the tanking goodies and I appear to be staying prot for the foreseeable future. There's something satisfying about 3.5k crits with a shield.

I'm very happy with the championing system. It's far better than the old way of gaining rep by having to do specific instances for each faction. There are only so many times that a person can run Shadow Labyrinth before they decide to just go kill the Lower City and take their stuff. Now people can do instances that give gear and get rep as more of a side-effect. Or once we have the gear we need, if we still need rep, we can just do whichever instance we like the most. That almost sounds fun. Crazy, isn't it?

A couple days ago I jokingly said we should give thanks for Ghostcrawler. Now I'm wondering, is that appropriate? Is it appropriate to give thanks for people? For people who affect us through a video game?

I see little reason why we cannot be thankful for people. There are some theories of human history which suggest that individuals don't matter as much as situations, so there comes a time for something to happen and someone ends up with that job. From what I remember, this was fairly popular with Marxists. It's something of a reaction to the old Great Man theory, which was basically that now and then someone pops up that changes the world, without them nothing would happen. These are both right and wrong. Personally I think that history has a generic movement due to the collective actions of humanity and natural events, but Great Men are pushed up and will give a specific flavor to history. So, we can be thankful for the people who have influenced history.

Can we be thankful for video games? Again, I don't see why not. Entertainment is important.

I suppose we can be thankful for Ghostcrawler. It's a bit trivial, but why not be thankful for trivial things? In some ways, the trivial things are the most important. They are what make daily life better. Freedom and rights are what make overall life worth living, but it's the trivial things that make the next hour worth it.

Let's give thanks for GC. Let's give thanks for Blizzard. Let's give thanks for the economic system that allows such companies to exist and innovate. Let's give thanks for the political and social systems that allow our economic system to exist. So thank yourself because the way you vote and act, what you expect from the world, shapes the world into something to be thankful for.

I did Wintergrasp and Strand of the Ancients for my first time today. Early today I had also started quests in Icecrown.

First the bad: SotA is too fast. It seems strange that a siege would be the fastest BG around. I'd have expected something a bit closer to AV, though obviously the old style of multi-day battles wouldn't go well now.

Wintergrasp seemed better. I didn't get to see much of it though since I flew over right after an instance and only got to catch the last 10-15 minutes of a Horde defense. What I did catch was a few battles between ground troops and a couple vehicles along with some shooting with the defense guns and one of the plague catapults. Apparently the cannons can be swiveled all the way around and fired through the doorway, which came in handy when the Alliance ran to the other side of the wall. I was able to still hit them with the AoE when they were fighting out of line of sight.

There looks to be a lot of potential for fun in that zone, especially since there are a few benefits to control, so it should attract more people. Afterward a ride around showed a ton of sardonite, especially rich nodes, and lots of elementals.

Moving on to PvE...Icecrown is great. Phasing makes everything so much more real, having actions actually change the world. Flying fortresses are cool. The Knights of the Ebon Blade seem to be one of the most intelligent groups around. They just get the job done. Also they gave me new tanking boots. Jumpbots are fun.

On to something completely different: I want dual specs now, and I want my second to be holy. Healing is more fun than I remember and sacred shield is turning out to be really useful in 5-mans. I'm just frustrated with the lack of bacon, making AoE a huge pain.

Recent PUGs have been pretty annoying. Yesterday was one in Violet Hold with a tankadin that couldn't pick up adds at all and didn't even respond when I asked for BoM. The warlock was an all around moron, who I'd actually run into before and I guess my ignore list was full then or something, so I'd forgotten who he was. The shaman had a habit of eating between the boss and the tank. Guess who gets initial aggro? I eventually left, they flamed me in trade, I ignored them. Today the PUG had rogues in it, which seem to have turned into melee hunters in terms of average level of intelligence. They died from retaliation, managed to get lost, managed to get an add on their way back to the group. I'm not sure how that happens when you have stealth.

The good news was that I did manage to get a good PUG, but it was the type of PUG that is really not a PUG as much as four people from top guilds who somehow ended up with me in their group. I don't know how it happens. Somehow I manage to attract either complete idiots or the absolute top people, at least in terms of progression.

The first thing I did was fly to Dalaran to port and train. I somehow got stuck on an invisible wall around it and got dismounted. The parachute buff wore off before the ground and due to misclicking, I failed to use my flexweave underlay.

Dying seems like an inauspicious start to level 80.

I recovered my mount and fly back over. Failing to learn my lesson, I got stuck again. And died again. This time my body was actually in the zone of Dalaran, but outside the walls, so I couldn't get to it.

WotLK look likes Blizzard took every complaint they had ever gotten and figured out how to address them, without caving in to whining.

Server stability seems to have been ruined and then fixed with the release and week or two after 3.0. That week or two was terrible, but I'm glad to have had the problems worked out then instead of now. My only complain with the servers is the queues, but that's partially due to players, both returning people and those who are on anyway playing a lot more. I imagine this will level out a bit as the numbers of 80s go up and the leveling rush slows.

Hellfire Peninsula was terrible early on. It was incredibly crowded and mobs were a pain to get. Variable respawns helped, except then you could have a mob instantly respawn on top of you. Or ten. Dead you. Now there are two starting zones. This cuts the zerg in half. To make it even better, there are scattered quest hubs, so people are spread out more. If one area is full, move somewhere else. The final big fix was with many quest mobs being summoned, eliminating the rush to tag mobs.

Questing is set up better as well. In the past quest stacking was unnatural. It required waiting around for all quests to become available for an area, often running to different quest hubs to get them all, and sometimes having to finish long chains first. Now there seems to be a short chain to introduce an area, and them up pop 4-5 quest markers for a single area.

Zones are more contained, so you can finish one and move on to the next in an orderly manner. This is great for completionists. This is also great for reducing the irritating travel times of the past. But the zones aren't totally separate. When you're done with an area, you get quests that send you to the next. It's organized, but if you're not looking for it you don't see it, you just see that you're having fun and not getting lost and constantly back-tracking.

The instances aren't so hallway-like. Azjol'nerub was really cool, which made it unfortunate that it's so short. Apparently there's another wing, which I'm looking forward to.

So yea, I got a 24 hour forum ban. This does not make me happy. I supposed I did get what was coming to me, after all, I did say that my Future Self had apparently gotten date-raped. That's probably not appropriate for the forums. Still, it's one of those things, of all the people out there, I have the luck to have my post read by a GM. It's not as if I was making things up. Let's see what I said and what my future self said.

Me on the forums:"Mine called me a noob that turned her into an alcoholic. Also I got the disturbing sense that I get date-ra ped."Oh right, evading the censors. Oops?

Future You (me):Future You whispers: Look at you fight; no wonder I turned to drinking. Future You whispers: Listen. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but there's going to be this party that you're invited to. Whatever you do, DO NOT DRINK THE PUNCH!

I said nothing that my future self didn't hint at. Why am I being punished for things that I have not yet done? This is not Minority Report.

The Horde and Alliance should communicate better. The Warsong orcs could have learned an important lesson from the dwarves: Do not dig quarries unless you want to get invaded. Dig quarry, wait a few minutes, something invades. It never fails.

The Mist seems to have be blown way out of proportion.

The anti- and pro-Nestingwary groups are funny.

I once said Blizzard is good at dead, or more accurately, undead content. I am forced to add "Cold Stuff" to that list. Blizzard is good at making Cold Stuff.

Zul'jin hasn't cashed yet. I guess they did all the server instability the last couple days to get it out of the way. Excellent timing.

I can't explain what it was, but it felt different. I haven't been there in a while since I usually take the shortcut to the Emperor. There was a strange feeling to it, a good one. What was it? Perhaps it was going back there after ret was buffed. Perhaps it was the undead. Perhaps it was simply the low NPCs which died so easily. But it seemed like more than just adding those up.

It felt like a paladin should feel.

I went from undead dwarf to undead dwarf, tearing them apart in seconds. When the rogue one used evasion, holy wrath made him stay still. When one tried to heal, hammer of wrath finished the job. The final one paid dearly for his demonic companions. Holy wrath kept them in place and divine storm took full advantage, tearing them apart.

Then I went to go kill the awe-inspiring Emperor.

I feel obligated to say something about WotLK, seeing as it is hitting servers tonight. Earlier today people were doing group quests, trying to stack completions to turn in for a leveling boost. They wanted to get ahead of the pack and avoid the noobs. I am torn. On one hand I hope their exploit fails and they end up with a few gold and wasted time turning them in. But it would be nice to get the exploiting idiots out of the way, let them run ahead and burn out sooner. They sicken me. These are the type of people that ruin WoW.

Maybe I'll gquit tomorrow. It seems rather pointless anyway. Raiding is suspended until people get to 80 and I can't make raids anyway. The last one I did was BT a few weeks ago and it was boring. Yes, BT, boring. Groups shouldn't be an issue since so many people will be leveling. I imagine I'd just get annoyed by the constant "ding!" and people ruining every surprise. Who am I kidding? I'll stick around because a couple friends are there.

My copy is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I guess I'll check for it after my morning class. Hopefully the Zul'jin will have crashed so I can get some work done.

I'm getting a weird feeling. It's a bit like what I get sometimes on Christmas Eve. I rationally know it's tomorrow, but somehow I just can't feel it. It's as if my mind refuses to believe it, like it's in denial. I suppose it fits, since WotLK is practically Christmas for WoW, bringing presents and toys for everyone. Also snow. And just like when I was a little kid, I'll probably be sent to collect ice boar livers and maybe a few troll tusks and my mom's stolen recipe book. Ah, the memories.

I'm not sure when they flipped the switch, but the official WoW forums are currently read-only.http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=12650534960&sid=1This may be the best decision they have ever made.

We are approaching a time when communication from Blizzard will be especially important. We are also approaching a time when spam will be at an all-time high.

Big deals:WotLK is almost here.The servers were down almost all of yesterday and a lot of today.The mail system is screwed up.

It's good to see that Blizzard has taken decisive action to ensure that they can communicate with the community. Sure, it's one-way, but it will be a lot more effective than two-way with a billion spam posts getting in the way.

I wonder where all the trolls will go.

[edit] 6:00 local time (no clue how that relates to listed time here, it's always off), the forums are unlocked. This confuses me. Why would they unlock them so soon? There doesn't appear to be a new Blue post about it. Maybe it was an accidental unlock?

2.0 was the patch of protection. Looking at talents it wasn't a gigantic buff. A few percent mitigation here, some stam there, a minor mechanical fix to a few talents. The real magic is more subtle. You won't notice it immediately. It's really a bit dull. It has no flashy graphics and won't give OMG HUGE NUMBERZ!

Spiritual attunement transformed paladin tanking. This was the ability that made prot a real tanking tree.Tanking gear without class: Warrior was the second big change that isn't really all that amazing looking back. Two years later, it's hard to imagine a time when if you were not a warrior you did not have tanking gear.

This is the time of less-than-amazing changes for ret. Divine Storm was the eye candy, but in the end, it's not the thing that makes it all work.

Judgements of the Wise transformed ret paladins. Oh sure, it's been nerfed heavily, but it is regen. Mana regen is serious business, just ask any caster. This is what will allow ret to DPS for more than a few minutes and what will ease the burden of needing intellect and mana/5 on gear.Sheathe of Light should be renamed "You are a hybrid." This is the talent that makes ret heals worth a damn. This is also the talent that makes their heals worth more than a damn.

Nerfs hurt, but it's the few changes such as gaining regen or SP that remake a spec. This is the time for retribution to gain even more acceptance, and acceptance beyond a 3% crit debuff.

Today I heard something about BoE epics from raid bosses being srs bns. I'll just assume that this is true and that they are in fact srs bns and not like current BoE epics. By that I mean upgrades from blues which you shouldn't be wearing for long anyway. So, as with all srs bns, these would need to be distributed. I normally would encourage my "Klepsacovic distributes everything however he feels like it" system, but apparently people read this and the popularity of this system could lead to a lot of extra work for me.

In unrelated news, hot chocolate with a shot of espresso in it is one of the best hot drinks ever, unless it's made by whoever made the one I just finished. Moving on.

Useful BoEs mean that lots of people want them and everyone can get them. Clearly this requires a more nuanced system than the current one for handling drops that few people want and only 10-25 people even have a shot at.

To start off, I think it's pretty standard that people who are in the raid have higher priority than people who are not there. Of course special circumstances could be created: we need X for this boss but long-time loyal raider could really use this piece, but he's stepping out for you, if there are no objections we'll give it to him. I probably wouldn't go for an exception like that, but there is one universal rule: Anything is okay as long as everyone involved agrees to it.

So, let's look at who is in the raid, all the possible combinations of priorities.The highest is clearly a main character getting an upgrade for a main spec. After that comes, in no particular order, alts, mains going for off-spec gear, and alts going for off-spec gear. The first two I'd put as a tie since they're approximately equal in usefulness to the guild (wrong character ~= wrong spec). The last is last since it's the least likely to be of any help to anyone, including the person getting the gear.

Now let's go outside the raid. There are again mains with main spec upgrades. Alts with main spec, mains with off-spec, and alts with off-spec. I'd say a similar order could be used.

This system isn't at all perfect. On one hand, it rewards attendance by prioritizing those who show up. On the other hand, it would potentially give gear to alts or off-specs over non-present mains of main spec. However if the supposed main with the main spec isn't showing up, is he actually more useful than the alt or off-spec? Maybe overall he is more useful, if it's like my earlier situation where he's only not present in order to free up a much-needed spot. However if he's taking up a needed spot and isn't missed, perhaps he's not the most useful class/spec and would be better off somewhere else instead of dropping raids and still getting gear.

What is loyalty worth? He's loyal, but is his loyalty of any benefit? Everyone might benefit more if he was loyal to a guild that actually needs him. But I've gotten off-topic.

Perhaps an entirely separate system is needed for BoEs. Maybe there could be an auction once a week to raise funds. There could be a separate DKP system, mirroring the system used for BoPs, but with its own pool. Officers could give out gear as it is requested and proven to be an upgrade, similar to BoE gems currently.

It's pretty simple to treat the BoEs as BoPs when they're in the raid, but not everyone will want them and sharding them isn't a very smart option. How they are handled once they leave the zone is going to be an issue that all guilds will have to figure out on their own.

While leveling up, any instance can be healed by any spec, assuming decent gear. It's not always easy, but it's possible. Being a healing spec would make the healer more effective, so how can that be bad? It teaches a false sense of security and power.

When someone makes a bad pull in a lowbie instance and have a shadow priest healing, they might die. Do the same with a holy priest and they're more likely to live. The more effective healer shelters people from the consequences of their actions. No deaths, no learning.

On the healer's side, it's about as bad. They are more efficient and heal for more. There is very little challenge. What will happen when they get to heroics or raids where being specced for healing isn't just an advantage that trivializes the content, but a requirement to even stand a chance? Healing while leveling is easy enough already, doing it with a healing spec is overkill.

Finally there's just the fact that healing specs kill slower, so they're inferior for soloing. This makes leveling take longer and it can become frustrating. That results in more alts stuck at low levels with the player turned off to the class.

With the exception of SoC and an insignificant AP benefit on SoR, paladin abilities used to be single-coefficient. They either benefited from SP or from AP. This was pretty bad for ret since it only had AP. Then two things happened. The first (not in chronological order, just order of me thinking them up), was awesome and was called Sheathe of Light. The second has no name and it ruined everything, it is the addition of AP benefits to just about every paladin offensive ability.

Back when ret had no SP the second thing made sense. But now ret has SP, from AP, so adding AP bonuses just means that ret gets to double-dip. Sheathe of Light is great, keep it. But...

What if abilities benefited only from AP or SP? The problem isn't sheathe, the problem is that everything was changed to allow ret to double-dip. If SoR was only SP, it could have a much higher SP coefficient. Judgements can be pure SP (as they used to be), since all specs have SP from somewhere.

Anyone that needs SP either wears SP gear (holy) or gets SP from other stats that they wear (prot and ret). Anyone that needs AP either wears str gear (ret and prot) or they don't need it (holy).

With one, only one exception, every single moonkin I meet in game is either bad at his class, rude, or both. I do not know what causes this. It's not a pre-existing anti-moonkin bias which causes me to negatively interpret neutral phrases. No, that is (actually by now, was) reserved for arms warriors and all classes of hunters. That list has since changed, with no hatred for arms, less dislike of hunters, and the addition of rogues. My point is that moonkin are jerks and/or noobs.

The first one I met was a jerk. But, I decided to go against my instinct and not make a fuss about him. He rode the epic train in my guild until we got to the slightest challenge, then ran. In retrospect I should have recommended that he be gkicked and blacklisted months back.

Then there was a general assortment of jerks in PUGs. There weren't a ton, since fortunately moonkin weren't and still aren't very common. Still, even with a small sample of only a dozen or so, a 100% occurrence of jerks seems to indicate something.

The exception continues to confuse me. He's a moonkin, but he's neither a jerk nor a noob. Fascinating. He's in my guild, but as the first example shows, that's not always a guarantee of positive ratings.

Most recently is was the jerk in a PUG with my priest. The situation was a bad tank who didn't talk much, which put him squarly in the middle of the group. The other people were a mage that didn't talk much, but could reliably sheep and eventually found her iceblock key, a shaman that started off the run by whining about a harmless fear (which saved the mage), and a moonkin that had no concept of aggro, off-healing, off-tanking, or shutting up.

So the tank pulls a bunch of mobs, or a pack and a pat, either way, there were too many mobs for him and I ended up with one on me due to aggro*. Seeing as no one except me was dying especially fast, I MCed one and set it on the other. Not a normal technique, but all the mobs died and all of us lived. As any good player knows, there are only two types of healing: enough and not enough. Seeing as I did the first, clearly I'd done my job. But no, the moonkin and shaman still didn't understand the concept of shutting up.

So, I suppose that's that. In my entire experience (that I remember, so I suppose that narrows it a tiny bit, but seeing how rare they are, you'd expect me to remember them), I've met one that wasn't in some way awful to be grouped with.

I have tried to be careful to speak only of my experiences and not moonkin overall, but maybe I slipped here or there. I have met non-terrible moonkin, just not in-game. So clearly there are some out there. Maybe I just attract terrible moonkin. I wonder if I will ever solve the Mystery of the Mean Moonkin. If you are a moonkin and not terrible, screenshots or you don't exist. :P

The class forums, as long as I can remember, have been pretty crappy. But there were still good posts here and there. The 500000 rate my gear, can I tank X, rate my spec, etc. are not what I refer to. Those may be annoying after you're posting for three years, but let's be honest, in the absence of stickies and having a weak search function, they are necessary. Hell, they're productive. Thanks to those threads someone out there is a little bit better.

Everything seems to have gone downhill.

The serious helpful people seem to be leaving. I can understand. Why stay in the nearly unmoderated forum, full of trolls and spam, when you can go to the role forums with a Blue, no, a DEVELOPER apparently hovering over them 20 hours a day?

The DPS forum is shit. Really, it's awful. But it's still better than the paladin forum now. The tank forum is great. Not perfect, but still, not much trolling, no spam, helpfulness out the wazoo, and a surprising amount of tank unity. Healing is a bit whiny, but I can understand it. If you're going to end up with the least well-designed role in the game, the least you could ask for is that your class be excellent at it.

The paladin forum seems to have collapsed. The trolls don't have the sort of urgency, flavor of the week, this is important, sense of a week or two ago. It's not as if they jumped on a bandwagon. That left. Now they're just sort of there. There were trolls before, but they were rarer and just seemed different.

There's nothing much productive anymore. The annoying, but useful "rate my X can I tank X help me with X" is fading or gone. There isn't even elaborate theorycrafted complaining. Instead there's a general sprinkling of whining and exaggerated claims of doom.

It's almost like a ghost town, except instead of normal ghosts they are from 12 years-old who died from lead poisoning. There an aura of trolling, desperation, and stupid. The sheriff seems to have left, but there's nothing worth looting. Instead people are wandering around in a drunken stupor, looking for cheap whores, but not even having enough money for them. There's no life anymore. I almost wonder if it is worth keeping open or if it should just be put out of its misery.

The old combination of mace spec, stormherald, and the stun meta was incredibly annoying. I hated it. I thought it needed nerfs for a long time. Lo and behold, mace spec is now much different. My warrior is pretty noobish, but it seems like a decent talent. It's not flashy now, but I like it. The rogue mace spec was changed in the same way, or at least similar enough for me to not notice.

Enter starfire.

Obviously I can't say that we'd have won the matches, but at least twice I saw starfire stuns completely ruining the match for us. The one I remember best was in Ruins of Lordaeron with a balance-arcane team. The burst was pretty ridiculous, but that's a rant for another day. I was trying to keep myself up without having to burn a five minute cooldown, and I was doing okay. Holy Light was about to finish, and then the stun lands. It was bubble or die. Later I had to wander around, sheeped, as my partner got pounded. His bubble was down due to the previously mentioned burst. Sheep wore off, I attempted to help, and woosh: cyclone.

If not for that stun, I'd have had my bubble. I'd have been able to bubble out and save my partner. By then the other team wasn't doing the greatest on mana, so we had a good shot at beating them.

I'd like to get back to that displaced burst rant though. Ret burst is being nerfed and has been nerfed. Over and over. Balance and arcane are currently doing what feel like comparable damage, at range, with ranged CC and tools for kiting. Compare this to ret that bursts, but has no tools to close gaps. Their burst can be consistently applied, ours cannot.

Yet we get nerfed? Even more, hotfix nerfed. This isn't the old old old reckoning we're talking about. World bosses aren't getting one-shotted. Oh no, someone e-peen shrunk because he lost to a ret paladin, now he's going to lose his... oh wait no, they froze titles before 3.0. There was nothing that should not have waited for a patch and the ability to update tooltips. I'd guess at least half of my spell descriptions are wrong because Blizzard had to nerf ret NOW. And yet resto druids for three seasons, where were the nerfs to knock out half their spirit regen or to disable travel form? Where were their crippling nerfs? NOWHERE. Bullshit. It's not a matter of balance, ret needed adjustments, it's about showing the slightest bit of consistency. Two days and we get nerfed, two, no three seconds, and they aren't touched. If there was the slightest bit of fairness, Blizzard would go back and strip titles from every team with a resto druid, take any gear they got, and send them a warning for exploiting game mechanics.

This could actually be done with only small changes to the spec and a single change to the class overall.

First, move AP->SP to a baseline ability.If holy heals end up too weak, buff Holy Guidance.Make Divine Intellect a AP->int talent.Buff Illumination back to 100% to compensate for the loss of regen on gear.

Currently holy is the only class/spec that uses spell power plate. This goes against the push to unify gear, to make it wanted for multiple specs and classes. Clothies all want SP cloth. The two classes that use leather also use AP/crit. Balance and resto can share gear, at least partially. Mail classes either use AP/crit or they are resto and elemental and can share partially. Plate classes all use AP/crit or similar tanking stats.

When holy gear drops, only holy wants it. When ret/prot gear drops, holy doesn't want it. No other spec has such poor sharing with others. Even the second worst, druids and shamans who would want much different amounts of hit, are still not so wasteful. They can make up hit elsewhere or for the healers, have a slight stat loss, but not a near-total waste as with holy.

Switching holy to strength gear benefits everyone. Holy can draw from a larger gear pool. Other plate classes don't have to groan when they see holy plate drop. Blizzard doesn't have to design as much armor, saving them time after the initial investment of converting holy.